MINERS’ MP Hywel Francis has hit back at a former Tory special adviser who said the decline of the coalmining industry should be celebrated.

The controversial claim was made by Hywel Williams — a cabinet aide during John Major’s government — in a documentary he made about the epic 1984-85 miners dispute broadcast on Welsh channel S4C last night.

In the y Gwir am y Glo (the Truth About Coal) programme, he called coalmining an “old fashioned industry” that could not be modernised with new technology.

And he said: “We should be glad the coalmining industry came to an end.

“The surprising thing is not that it died out but that it lasted so long.”

But Labour MP and historian Dr Francis told the Morning Star: “This was not his nor his party’s public view then nor in the 1990s when the industry was privatised.

“On the contrary they claimed their policies would have saved the industry.

“Well, they didn’t and the NUM has been proven correct once again in its claim that the Tories were intent on destroying the industry.”

The Labour MP and historian, who is set to release a new edition of his book History on Our Side next month, also dismissed the Tory’s attempts to rehabilitate Margaret Thatcher.

Mr Williams insisted she was not taking revenge on the miners for bringing down Edward Heath’s Tory government, but merely “maintaining the law and the running of the country.”

Dr Francis, who chaired the famous Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valley Miners Support Group, said though that was not the history that most Welsh people would recognise.

The documentary can be watched with English subtitles on BBC iPlayer.

[email protected]